I just spent over 4 hours to get my foil in "like new" condition. Is there any way to keep the foil from tarnishing so quickly? I was thinking maybe putting on a coat of clear laquer or something although I am afraid it might hurt performance. How does everyone else deal with this?

Keith, some people anodize LE and LEXs that will stop the tarnishing. For those of us with regular foils I'd say: - Wipe the foil down after every run - Do not store the foil in a foil bag, use the bag for transport and in the boat. - Use a buffer, it makes it much easier than by hand.

I'm not sure of which products work best. I have been using rouge and a buffer. Do it a few times a year.

Also, some water will cause the foil to tarnish faster. Here in Seattle, Lake Washington and Sammamish do not cause much tarnishing.

Thanks for the comments. Where do you buy Jeweler's Rouge? I used Mothers Metal Polish to clean mine up on Sunday (a beautiful day in Chicago - but my boat is still in storage so all I could do was polish!).

The foils used to be powder coated. This is still suitable for use today, but if you powder coat it, take care in that you will have to color sand it all and if you get it too thick in some areas it WILL affect the performance. Plus if you chip it anywhere you will have to feather sand and spray it again, and sand some more. A painted foil wont give you quite as smooth of a ride as an uncoated foil assembly. The same thing with anodizing, if you chip it, how are you going to repair it? Peeling is another issue with anodizing. Air Chair has a foil sealer available, so it does help to keep it from tarnishing as quickly as it can without it. We went from polishing every weekend to only polishing every 6 months after using the sealer. The sealer seems to work great in most water.

I had a long time ago one of the powder coated air chairs. I bought paint stripper at the hardware store and stripped it then I block sanded it with multiple grades of sand paper and did a lot of fine tuning. It is pretty rough underneath stock but did make a difference. Good luck.